Man’s 100th birthday party is Sunday

Carl Carlson sits with his wife, Ethel, who holds a photo of the couple on their wedding day in 1941, at their home on Wednesday in Lynn Haven. Carlson will be 100 on April 1.

Heather Leiphart | The News Herald

By JACQUELINE BOSTICK / The News Herald

Published: Friday, March 22, 2013 at 08:19 PM.

LYNN HAVEN — At age 99, Carl Carlson proves there are some benefits to having a vivid imagination.

“When I get a piece of wood, I like to carve it out just so and make it something,” Carlson said.

Handcrafted model ships of various sizes sit in display cases and cabinets throughout Carl and Ethel Carlson’s home in Lynn Haven.

“I was interested in that trade from my early days; I was just born into it.”

His creations include his own plans for his model ships of La Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria; he also built a miniature Viking ship, working loom, stage coach and duplicated a spinning wheel his wife used as a child in Finland.

But of all of his creations in the past century, the little one he made up to gain his wife’s heart could be the most brilliant. And it was made with his imagination, not his hands.

He and his wife Ethel Carlson met in 1940 in Worcester, Mass., at a rehearsal for a play “The Preacher and the Shoemaker.”

LYNN HAVEN — At age 99, Carl Carlson proves there are some benefits to having a vivid imagination.

“When I get a piece of wood, I like to carve it out just so and make it something,” Carlson said.

Handcrafted model ships of various sizes sit in display cases and cabinets throughout Carl and Ethel Carlson’s home in Lynn Haven.

“I was interested in that trade from my early days; I was just born into it.”

His creations include his own plans for his model ships of La Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria; he also built a miniature Viking ship, working loom, stage coach and duplicated a spinning wheel his wife used as a child in Finland.

But of all of his creations in the past century, the little one he made up to gain his wife’s heart could be the most brilliant. And it was made with his imagination, not his hands.

He and his wife Ethel Carlson met in 1940 in Worcester, Mass., at a rehearsal for a play “The Preacher and the Shoemaker.”

“(The characters) were vying for me. And I wanted the shoemaker, I didn’t want the preacher,” Ethel Carlson said of her role in the play.

She said the original “preacher” pulled out of the play and Carl Carlson stepped in because he spoke “good Swedish.”

“It was a rehearsal and she had to go home. The fellow says, ‘you better go and take her home before the other guys ask her,’ ” Carlson said.

Before going home the two went to a restaurant to have coffee and pie.

“And that’s when he was telling me all about that he had been in Finland, and I says, ‘Well, that’s funny; I didn’t see you there’ … He gave me all types of stories about how he knew the church, how far it was and that was true …,” Ethel Carlson said.

However, after asking him a question that warranted an eyewitness account, “he couldn’t answer it.”

“He had to confess; he was lying. He hadn’t been there,” she chuckled.

Other than living as a child for about four years in Santa Rosa Beach, her husband spent his life in a Swede-Finish community of Worcester.

In his defense, Carlson said, “I heard so much about (Finland) that I pictured it in my mind.”

Between 1950 and 1995, Carlson made about 10 trips to Finland, Ethel Carlson said.

The couple moved to the area in 1945 and bought six lots on Alabama Avenue in 1946, where they built three homes; allowing Carlson to share a little of the local area with his extended Swede-Finish family members, including his parents, brother and cousin.

They have two children Janice McDonald, 70, and David Carlson, 69.

By profession, Carlson worked in the local area for 22 years as a civilian machinist at the formerly called, U.S. Navy Mine Defense Laboratory (Naval Coastal Systems Center) at Naval Support Activity Panama City Command and five years at the local paper mill.

Although his birthday is on April 1, community members can celebrate Carlson’s 100th birthday with him from 3 to 5 p.m. on Sunday at Lynn Haven Presbyterian Church, 810 Georgia Ave.

Glancing over at her husband sitting in a recliner next to her, she smiled.